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Child Care Supports

Use the key issues below as a guide to find related data, research or other resources in your work:

  • Key Issue 1: Strong communities start with strong families. Investing in young children’s health and care pays off for all of us. Babies grow up healthier, parents have more opportunity to work, communities are more connected and our economy gets stronger.
  • Key Issue 2: Without stable access to high-quality child care, parents are often forced to create patchwork systems to meet their needs. Infants and toddlers might be under the care of one parent one day, a grandparent/caregiver another day and a child care provider on another. This patchwork child care reality that families face can lead to instability and stress for all involved in this ecosystem.
  • Key Issue 3: Child care is critical infrastructure that allows parents to work and young children—particularly children in the critical period from prenatal to age three—to grow and develop in a safe, caring and stimulating learning environment.

Materials from the following partners were used in the development of the guiding message points in this chapter:

Key Issue 1: Strong communities start with strong families

Key Issue 1: Strong communities start with strong families. Investing in young children’s health and care pays off for all of us. Babies grow up healthier, parents have more opportunity to work, communities are more connected and our economy gets stronger.

During the first three years of life, the brains and bodies of infants and toddlers make huge gains in development. Babies’ brains develop fastest from before birth to age three, and their early experiences—both positive and negative—build the foundation for their ability to learn, their behavior and their overall physical health. Babies are active learners—processing sounds, grammar, and word meanings, and taking in knowledge, skills and abilities. We see this when babies grow up in multilingual environments: They can understand more than one language.

Still, attention often focuses on the school years—especially the connection between third-grade reading and positive outcomes for life. The reality is that early learning must start earlier and be more comprehensive. Investment in PN-3 ensures that children start school ready to learn and aren’t left to catch up later. And for every dollar we spend on high-quality programs that support young children from birth, we see a 13% annual return in economic benefits in areas such as reduced health care costs and less crime. Families need access—from the birth of a child—to care and learning settings that best fit their needs. By investing in what families need to raise healthy babies and toddlers, we are investing in our communities and our future.

Key Issue 2: Stable access to high-quality child care

Key Issue 2: Without stable access to high-quality child care, parents are often forced to create patchwork systems to meet their needs. Infants and toddlers might be under the care of one parent one day, a grandparent/caregiver another day, and a child care provider on another. This patchwork child care reality that families face can lead to instability and stress for all involved in this ecosystem.

This is an especially important issue for parents of color, who, due to decades of occupational and residential segregation, have less access to remote work and the flexibility it affords families with young children. In America’s poorest states, families of color and child care workers, most of whom are women, have been disproportionately impacted by the lack of a universal, government-backed child care system. Those inequities have shown up in the shockingly low wages child care workers receive and the lack of affordable, quality care options for low-income working families, especially single mothers who mostly work in low-wage jobs and cannot break out of poverty. For those families, child care was a daily struggle long before the pandemic, and the state’s youngest and most vulnerable have borne the consequences.

Child care vouchers in many states have been the government mechanism to try to address one of the four main child care problems: costs. But with insufficient funding on the state and federal level, many low-income, eligible families have not received any benefits. For example, in Mississippi, only 20% of eligible families actually receive government child care assistance. Throughout the country, systems make it challenging for families to access supports, even when they are eligible. More simple application processes, better phone and technology access, and community outreach and support are proven ways to increase availability and effectiveness of programs.

Millions of dollars flowed into states during the pandemic, giving more eligible families access to assistance (as many as 80%) and helping support child care providers. State early childhood advocates called the temporary infusion of money a “game changer,” but a long-term, comprehensive child care solution that includes significant supports for America’s most vulnerable families is needed.

Key Issue 3: Child care is critical infrastructure

Key Issue 3: Child care is critical infrastructure that allows parents to work and young children—particularly children in the critical period from prenatal to age three—to grow and develop in a safe, caring and stimulating learning environment.

Linking resources for families ensures a strong start for babies and toddlers, reduces the friction between work and care, and strengthens communities and the economy. We can’t continue working within a system where a majority of families live in child care deserts, a system that serves just 4.2% of infants and toddlers from low- to moderate-income families, and a system that is subsidized by paying poverty wages to early educators. These are challenges holding back all people in the United States—rural, suburban and urban; low- and middle-income—with particular harm in communities experiencing structural racism: White, Black, Latinx, Indigenous and Asian Pacific Islander communities. 

Child care is a basic right and a critical investment, equally important as other actions that power our economy. Expanded access to health insurance, easier access to food benefits, paid family leave, state minimum wage and state-earned income tax credits are all cited as essential state-level policies that create an effective system of care. It’s time to start treating child care as essential infrastructure.

Data / Proof Points

  • Center for American Progress' fact sheet on Early Learning in the United States in 2021: These fact sheets provide state-by-state data on access to affordable child care for families, compensation for child care providers and economic benefits of increased public investment in early learning. Fact sheets are released annually, providing an overview of the current early childhood landscape and opportunities to expand access to quality child care and early learning for families.
    • How to use + resources to boost your message: These fact sheets can be used to help stakeholders better understand the critical need for long-term federal investment to make early learning affordable and accessible for all families while also ensuring that early educators are fairly compensated.

  • ReadyNation’s study on the economic impact of child care: ReadyNation has updated its 2018 study examining the economic impacts of the nation’s child care crisis on infants and toddlers, working parents, employers and taxpayers. It now shows $122 billion in lost earnings, productivity and revenue—more than double that in 2018. The Collaborative can use this report as a proof point for greater systemic investment in PN-3 infrastructure.
    • How to use + resources to boost your message: While the data in this report is state specific, local advocates can use it to paint a broader picture and provide context for the importance of PN-3 investment. The report now tracks the economic impacts of inadequate child care both pre- and post-pandemic, showing that a combination of COVID-19 and insufficient policy action have made the crisis worse. This can be a powerful tool in the Collaborative's toolbox for conversations with state and federal stakeholders.

  • ZERO TO THREE and NCIT's Early Head Start Message Brief: This brief shares research-tested messaging and broad policy guidance to help members craft messages and materials to speak with policymakers and other stakeholders about the needs and opportunities for enacting policies that increase access to Early Head Start.
    • How to use + resources to boost your message: The language can serve as a way to (1) introduce Early Head Start within the frame of prenatal-to-three policies, (2) demonstrate why families need access to Early Head Start, (3) provide recommendations to improve investment in and access to Early Head Start in your communities, and (4) drive policy change for Early Head Start.

  • ZERO TO THREE and NCIT's High-Quality, Affordable Child Care Message Brief: This brief shares research-tested messaging and broad policy guidance to help members craft messages and materials to speak with policymakers and other stakeholders about the needs and opportunities to invest in high-quality, affordable child care for infants and toddlers. 
    • How to use + resources to boost your message: The language can serve as a way to (1) introduce high-quality, affordable child care within the frame of prenatal-to-three policies, (2) show why families need equitable access to high-quality, affordable child care in all settings, (3) provide recommendations to improve child care policies in your communities and (4) drive policy change for high-quality, affordable child care by using message-tested calls to action.

  • Prenatal to Five Fiscal Strategies' report on using cost estimation to inform child care policy: This report analyzes how to develop a cost estimation model that reflects the price tag of care and true needs of the child care system. Given growing momentum for a better approach to rate setting, Prenatal to Five Fiscal Strategies (P5FS) developed this guide to using cost estimation modeling to set subsidy rates, informed by experience working with New Mexico, the District of Columbia and dozens of other states and communities in recent years.
    • How to use + resources to boost your message: When left up to the free market, the child care industry is broken. When the Collaborative is informing policymakers on how to make child care more affordable, this report will provide proof that estimating the true cost of care should determine how much subsidies each state and territory should get instead of the market rate.

  • BUILD Initiative’s Improving Child Care Compensation Backgrounder 2021: The Improving Child Care Compensation Backgrounder provides tactical information to help leaders better understand the policy levers available to support early educator compensation. This update includes examples of how states and counties are implementing the eight strategies covered in the backgrounder, including (1) compensation scales and standards, (2) wage stipends and bonus payments, (3) individual tax credits for child care educators, (4) ARPA child care stabilization subgrants, (5) child care assistance, (6) benefits, (7) apprenticeships and (8) pre-K parity for child care.
    • How to use + resources to boost your message: The information in this backgrounder uses Illinois; Minnesota; North Carolina; Rhode Island; Washington; Connecticut; Delaware; Washington, D.C.; and more as sample states for how the eight strategies to fix child care compensation can be implemented. The Collaborative, especially state-based organizations, can use these states as case studies for developing their own messaging on improving child care compensation. The backgrounder also grades the different policies in every state that will help the Collaborative make its case for reforming child care compensation to policymakers and legislators.

Also from The BUILD Initiative:

Tribal Nations, Sovereignty and Equity Focused Early Childhood Policy Development (2022 National Conference Session)

Exemplary Supports for Emerging Bilingual Learners Report (2022)

  • Children's Funding Project's Voters Will Tax Themselves for Kids: More than 80% of voters believe that creating equitable opportunities for children to get a strong start in life should be one of the highest priorities for the government—and they are willing to raise their own local taxes to make those opportunities possible. This finding, and others about voters’ attitudes toward funding for children and youth services, comes from a national poll of U.S. voters who participated in the 2020 election.
    • How to use + resources to boost your message: This infographic has information on public support for greater investment in PN-3 infrastructure. Knowing that voters are willing to raise their own local taxes is pivotal because it may help policymakers and stakeholders gauge the popularity of policies benefiting young children. The Collaborative can use this data as proof points in messaging when necessary.

Additional references:

 

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